Aggie (Agnes Beat)--laughing flight nurse

Remember when we were really young, and anyone 10 years older was OLD. Remember when we were 40, and 75 was old. You get the picture--age is so relative.
    Last week Aggie--beautiful blonde soldier pictured on this blog---came over to play cards with some other friends. We never did play cards; we got too busy visiting and laughing so much, and enjoying each others' company.
    Even though Aggie is 90, she still is not old. Her body is trying to slow her down, but she has a full schedule every week, and I am sure she keeps everyone laughing at each event she attends.
     Unfortunately, she is so  humble that trying to get her to relate stories about her life as a flight nurse is like listening to someone tell about flipping burgers at McDs. One time, the plane on which she was in charge of between 25 & 30 injured soldiers lost an engine and made a crash landing on a remote Pacific island. To hear Aggie tell the story, it was like having a flat tire on a dirt road with a bunch of friends who were hurt a little bit--- so she took care of them until help arrived.
       When, I was a kid, and my mother's nurse friends would come to visit, I never dreamed that over fifty years later one of them would become my dear friend.  Aggie has the most wonderful, contageous laugh and spreads joy to all she meets. I can imagine most all the soldiers she cared for must have fallen in love with her. Probably a good thing she saw most only on the long flights from evac centers to real hospitals at Hickam in Hawaii and later to San Francisco.
     Looking at Aggie, and other seniors in our church family, I realize there are so many fantastic interesting stories that need to be told and preserved before it is too late.
    Last evening I was reading through an interview given by my Uncle Ben, (a bomber pilot in Europe during WWII), before he died a few years ago. Another humble person, he mentioned that the people on the homefront also made great, unappreciated sacrifices during the war.
     I would love to hear your stories and use this blog as a "beginning" to honor these people of the "Greatest Generation" who are aging much too quickly.  Please just click below--0 comments to post your reflections

Honoring unsung heroes and heroines

Hi All,
Ever since I read Tom Brokaw's wonderful book  The Greatest Generation which details the sacrifices of military men (mostly), I have felt that a book needed to be written about the people on the homefront and what they did to keep the war machine moving. I know some books have been published, but none had the stories that my parents told--some funny, some poignant. What began as a short story about Mom and her nursing school buddies, and a few stories about Dad is now over 100 pages and still growing.
      This is because I  have become good friends with Aggie, one of Mom's best friends during nursing school. This wonderful, feisty woman, who turned 90 in May, joined the Army-Air Force after graduating from nursing school and served as a flight nurse in the Pacific. Her humility makes it difficult to discover many stories through her, even though she is as "sharp as a tack." Therefore,  I have done quite a lot of research with the help of Air Force archivists and learned so much about the heroic actions of WW II flight nurses. Unfortunately, there is little written for the common citizen about the action of  WW II flight nurses, and their experiences are just beginning to be honored.  Anyway, what began as a short story for family to honor my parents has become a much bigger project, and will include other people of the WW II  era and their stories.
  For her birthday last month, I gave Aggie a copy of what I have written thus far, and she was delighted and said, "I almost wet my pants remembering antics we pulled as student nurses.  
   If you are interested in WW II and especially know anything about flight nurses during WW II, I would love your input. If you have homefront stories about people who deserve to be honored, this is a great place to begin to honor them.
Hope we make lots of friends who are also interested in the era of "the greatest generation."